expedition32

The East Germans did excellent industrial espionage and they could copy the West.

The hard part is making things at scale. And let's face it nobody wants expensive American drones if they can buy cheap Chinese ones.

The 1978 world cup finale in Argentina was held right next to the torture center.

To put things into perspective when people whine about the American held world cup: nobody was thrown out of an airplane.

Teams get paid to wear Nike or Adidas.

It led to the hilarious situation were they have to wear pink shoes so that the audience looks at them.

It has fuelled Chinese exports to Europe. The enormous industrial capacity of China hasn't gone down they've simply rerouted the cargo ships.

It is deliberate. Americans want the hoops because they hate poor people.

In my country if you want to dig into the ground more than a few meters you'd need to get a permit. Officially everything that is buried is registered but every once in a while they find an old pipe that nobody knows what it is for.

After WW2 all European countries had massive housing shortages. It was not capitalism that solved it but heavy government involvement. In a span a few decades millions of people were re-housed. The free market is remarkably terrible at pumping out houses fast.

It is no coincidence that a lot of piracy is now hosted in Russia.

The real things that kill the internet is tech bros who learned you can make money with the internet and ofcourse AI which will make sure the internet becomes bots who communicate with other bots.

A certain highly respected American general wanted to make the border between North Korea and China a literal radioactive wasteland in order to cut off Chinese reinforcements and supplies.

We can all be very happy the US is not the sole owner of nukes lol.

I always wondered where and how my country would test nukes if it developed them. Basically there is an expectation that you have to explode at least one.

It was much easier in colonial times when everyone owned a desert or remote island

We live in neo feudalism. The hard part is getting to a billion but once you do your family will be part of the elite for centuries.

Yeah this is why none of this is really happening. The US bases in Europe cannot be replaced.

To my knowledge Ramstein has never been hit by a suicide terrorist or drone.

War?! In my Middle East? Preposterous.

I suppose this is why Microsoft and Google want to build data centers in the Netherlands. Its not cheap but it is safe.

When I was a child I saw Blade Runner. Ever since that day I've had a weakness for concrete jungles. Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai- that's how humans were intended to live.

Unfortunately my European brothers and sisters prefer to live in open air museums. However slowly but surely skyscrapers have been creeping up into the Netherlands- you just can't beat the efficiency.

Absolute power corrupts. Many such pedophile rabbi cases.

All healthcare systems are limited. You have to triage.

In America this is done according to wealth and status. In my country this is done according to medical status.

Japanese politicians make Reagan look like a card carrying communist.

He was more than a hero he was a Union man.

The economy of the DDR was a basket case. It was the USSR that did them in when the Soviets stopped selling them oil and gas for cheap in the 1970s.

Moscow was surprisingly capitalist. They noticed they could sell their resources to the West for dollars or give them away to their communist "allies".

I have to give it to the Americans their sex offenders register is public. Hopefully he or she ends up homeless and penniless.

Not just dodgy some are straight up illegal.

They'll act if someone threatens to sue otherwise Google doesn't give a shit as long as they get paid.

It doesn't help that literally every medical procedure in America is automatically 10 times more expensive than anywhere else in the world.

And any US hospital administrator will pump that injured foreigner for all he or she's worth. At least the quality of care is decent.

Consolidation. This happened with cars during the great depression. Lots of small factories were bought out by Ford and Chrysler.

It's quite funny how Trump is killing European industry. Literally everything America has been doing the last few years has benefited China.

The Chinese economy has real weaknesses make no mistake about it and a competent US leader could have worked with his global allies to exploit them.

So now if you ask ChatGPT about what electric shaver to buy the answer will be sponsored? How nice.

Until they forgot to pack winter clothes and froze to death in Russia.

There is an offshoot of the Catholic church in the Netherlands were the bishop is not chosen by the Vatican.

Dutch people really handle hierarchy poorly and prefer "flat" organisation style. Anyone who acts as the boss doesn't last long.

Anything with a microphone in it can be used to spy on you.

I always found that talking to computers is incredible stupid and only looks good in Star Trek. But I am apparently the minority in this because every car, phone and television has a voice activated interface.

There was scandal with Siri that lasted for about 5 minutes.